CHARLOTTE, N.C. – As good as it has been for Pau Gasol as a Laker, this is as bad as it has ever gotten.

“I would say so,” Gasol said Friday night.

I’d asked him if this was the most “off” the Lakers have been since he came to them two-plus years ago. The spacey look on Gasol’s face that remained despite a fresh shower conveyed it, too. The tiredness in those eyes seemed more fitting of Gasol as the years dragged on in Memphis, not as a defending NBA champion.

Yet Gasol put it plainly: “We have no real confidence in what we’re doing right now.”

He acknowledged it might appear on the surface to be back-to-back losses in Miami and Charlotte, but that’s not the burden the Lakers are starting to feel.

Unless they go 19-0 the rest of the way, they can’t match their 65-17 record from last season. They’ve already matched their 12 road losses all of last season – with 12 more road games to go. Phil Jackson is fully aware that Cleveland (22-10), Boston (22-10) and Dallas (20-12) have better road records than the Lakers (17-12), and road records have long been the baseline Jackson uses to judge championship chances.

“We’ve been pretty inconsistent overall on the road this year. That has been a fact,” Gasol said. “We’re staying that way. I was hoping we could turn it up this part of the season. We’ll see what happens Sunday (in Orlando).”

The Lakers said all the right things Thursday night after going through the motions and then losing late in Miami. They were confident that flipping the switch would indeed bring them into the light.

They did start with increased effort – and then they were stymied by the same extended Larry Brown defense that shredded the Lakers’ triangle offense in the 2004 NBA Finals. Those Lakers, limited by the newness of Gary Payton and Karl Malone, were exposed as not knowing how to move the triangle up and still get into the halfcourt sets. Kobe Bryant told me years later that the ’04 Lakers simply “were not ready” to win for that fundamental basketball reason.

Brown sprung the Bobcats’ defense Friday night to the same effect. Although Gasol wasn’t sharp on his own, he had to check himself from blaming teammates who didn’t use the proper automatics and pressure releases that are triangle basics.

“Guys just … we threw passes that weren’t meant or supposed to be thrown at times,” Gasol said. “With a team like this that puts you under pressure, you have to go to different, other options in the triangle that we didn’t use.”

Said Jackson: “The simple matter was that we didn’t get the ball in position to make post passes. We couldn’t get the ball in the right spot. They took those spots away.”

Improbably, the skillful Lakers are fifth in the NBA in defense but just 14th on offense this season by field-goal percentage. They have not developed into a smooth triangle team, with one of their sparks (Shannon Brown) running stuff that isn’t even triangle, one of their lead guards (Jordan Farmar) still not embracing the triangle and one of their starters (Ron Artest) not yet getting the triangle because of the novelty Payton and Malone experienced.

The Lakers’ losses this season are mostly characterized by Bryant choosing to or needing to take over the offense. He scored nine of the Lakers’ 17 second-quarter points in Charlotte, seemingly taking Gasol further out of things, and Jackson said afterward: “He had a one-man show in that second quarter that carried us into the game again. That is something that we want to save for an end-game situation, and not use in the second quarter to get back into a game.”

Bryant said he’d likely address with “my guys” a lack of initiative in defending this title. But Lamar Odom even said late Friday night: “The identity of this team is to be patient.”

“If we want to repeat as champions, it’s not going to be easy,” said Bryant, who repeated in 2001 and ‘02. “You gotta bring it.”

Even more than that, though, it’s a matter of understanding how to bring that effort in the context of what works as a team – and shake the post-champagne hangover. The ’01 and ’02 Lakers got worse and worse on the road, too.

With such insane offensive potential, the Lakers still have plenty of room to grow this season – if they really dedicate themselves to working together.

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